The surge of generative artificial intelligence has gone alongside a renewed interest in questions about the relationship between machine learning and copyright law. In our newly published policy paper #15 entitled “Using copyrighted works for teaching the machine” (also available as a PDF file), we are looking at the input side of the equation within the EU copyright framework.
We discuss the considerations of the use of copyright-protected works and other protected subject matter as training data for generative AI models, and provide two recommendations for lawmakers. Here, we leave aside questions relating to the output of AI models (e.g. whether the output of generative AI models is copyrightable and in how far such output can be infringing exclusive rights), which we will address in another, yet to be published paper.
This paper is without prejudice to the position of COMMUNIA or individual COMMUNIA members regarding this discussion in other jurisdictions.
